Strange Titans
by AlsoSprachOdin
Summary: Macabre and bizarre oneshots and drabbles. The mysteries of Titans Tower will be uncovered, the world set right, still more set completely out of whack and new takes on the Titans are taken. CH6 is up, in which is explained why Raven's skin is grey.
1. Blood Sport

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans

So I finally got to post this. It's my first piece of fanfiction, but who cares. There's more to come. Reviews are much appreciated.

**Blood sport**

It's cold here. It might not be cold enough to be Antarctica, but the impenetrable darkness would definitely fit well enough. But Antarctica never had _levels_ like Dantes hell. And few places inhabited this particular breed of bizarre creatures.

The bottom of the ocean, perhaps. There are always sounds in the ocean, just about no matter where you go. Here; a steady, monotone, soulless hum, source and direction indeterminable.

This is the place all whales eventually sink to, a graveyard for the greatest creatures to have ever roamed planet Terra. Daylight is void, and the bumps in the everlasting night never cease. The songs of whales travel the globe, and no environment is too barren for something small and sharp not to scuttle about in the shadows.

Outside these frost-walls, the footfalls and whispers of giants come and go, sometimes the storm of immense battles, threatening to destroy this small, cold world. And sometimes, the gate is opened, for elder inhabitants to disappear forever, or for new, strange _somethings_ to enter, for however long.

- - - - - - - - ¨l¨ € € l\l - ¨l¨ ! ¨l¨ /\ l\l 5 - - - - - - - -

For only seconds, peace was broken into a thousand stinging shards. Pandemonium was bright and loud, and ended with a short thunder as suddenly as it had started.

Everything was dark and cold once more. That was good, somehow; secure. Like the world should be that way. The chaos only moments ago had been harmless, almost immaterial. That much seemed known.

The sweetly smell of rot in a thousand variants had thinned little. A brief gust of warmth from beyond was fading. It had almost stopped prickling.

There was a strange sensation, as if something unpleasant had happened. But everything was as it should be, as it somehow knew was right.

The staleness that surrounded it above and below; the chill, hard grounds and planes as everlasting and unmoving as it knew them to be; the sour, sweet, tangy and bitter, soft, mushy, crisp and liquid things that were; everything was in its place.

Something was _not _as it should be. Something was different: A smooth-hard surface; not cold. It wasn't supposed not to be cold, it was strange and alien not to be; not right.

At the same time, the warmth was pleasant, and soon it moved all of itself towards this lingering heat from beyond the world. It was a slow movement, and though the foreign object had been placed right next to some of it, the rest was still elsewhere. Above, below and from the deepest corners it slowly retracted itself towards the warmth, beneath it and upwards, where the heat seemed to gather.

On its top, it was no longer hard. It was soft, and very warm. It had a mild, sweet-salty taste.

Without willing it, it decomposed outer layers of itself and secreted enzymes in a sour juice to mix into the warm mass inside the smooth shell. Billions upon billions of microorganisms and parasites – some big enough to contain entire ecosystems of more parasites inside themselves – unleashed themselves upon the fresh and rich feeding grounds

Within seconds, the very outermost layer of softness had become scummy mucus it could absorb some of into itself, and it tasted that it was good.

There was also another sensation, something as strange as the warmth, but not good. As this new sensation grew, it became increasingly clear that the feeling was something else than good, like something that wasn't right, or not-right. The feeling came from the warm mass.

There was no thought. There wasn't even a pre-programmed instinct for this input. Some of it reacted, moved or dissolved itself: The extent of its abilities. Some of it just sensed its own damage as it progressed, not take any pleasure or displeasure in it, just experiencing it as it would any aroma or flavour.

Then it wasn't the only thing that moved. The mass turned over inside its shell.

The world shook then. Tremors travelled along the level. The warm mass spilled out of the encompassing surface and onto wiggling, dissolving body-parts and extensions.

It felt the mass shift inside itself in a million places, its gelatinous surface changing from smooth and soft to something more rough and rubbery as the gooey thing reacted by splitting open all over itself like pores sucking in air.

It could then feel itself filtered inside this alien substance along with the sour juices. It felt cells decompose to a point below the safe and reversible digestive process inside this thing, felt its symbiotic microorganisms dying and still greater parts of its own sterilised.

The pain didn't register to it as pain, and fight-or-flee instincts didn't kick in, because it had no instinctive concept of pain, or for that matter of anything beyond feeding on whatever it found.

That's why, even though this food obviously was the cause of this non-good feeling, it couldn't respond in any other way than to try _eating it more_.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And so, two hardly identifiable substances slowly slid through one set of grates after the other, all the while melting further into cellular disintegration and biological warfare until they reached the bottom, where they stayed, rotted, and died in a cold, dark place.

- - - - - - - - ¨l¨ € € l\l - ¨l¨ ! ¨l¨ /\ l\l 5- - - - - - - -

"Let's see then. And the winner by strangely living stuff in the T-tower iiiis…" He opened the door. "… Uurhg!"

"– Oh!"

"– Holy, sweet mother of…!"

"Dude-dude-dude-dude-dude! Close it, fast dude!"

He closed the door, mindful not to slam it, as it would only demolish the fridge with the force he usually slammed things.

"God, the stench! It's… incredibly… almost awesome."

"Don't even think about adding some of that to the stankball. I will not sanction it, it'd be a crime of war.

"Right, ok … sooo…?"

"… So what?"

"Which one won?"

A disbelieving look. "Do you want me to open it again to find out?"

"Just let me take cover before you do."

"You already saw what was in there. How am I supposed to determine if one of them is still… alive?"

"You're the man with the scanners."

"Oh, yeah… but I don't feel like taking such a close look at that. I mean, you don't wanna find out with your animal senses either."

"I see you point."

"So let's not."

…

"This was such a bad idea."

"It was already pretty messy with just the fridge-fungus. I think I had a couple Duracell batteries in there."

"… Draw?"

"Draw. Let's unplug this, bury it in the hole. Actually, you do that, and I'll go buy a new one, and some fresh, 'shroom-free food – and tofu, so don't worry."

"Ok, good. But who's going to explain Starfire that her glorg supreme is buried like a corpse in our backyard?"

"The fungus too. I think she was secretly cultivating that thing all along, sly little girl… I guess we can make another bet; the loser talks to Star."

"Cool. What's the bet?"


	2. The Solution

**Routine - the wonders of modern day technology**

It was a morning like so many others in Titans Tower. Cyborg and Beast Boy were playing video games, or maybe they were fighting about food (who cares?). Starfire, unbeknownst to all, cultivated breakfast before they could settle it. Raven was sitting cross legged, meditating, on the ceiling. Her cloak showed no signs of gravity working in the opposite direction. And Robin went through the double doors into Ops only to find out, upon setting foot into the sunlight streaming through the giant wall-sized window, that he'd become a vampire.  
'Argh! God dammit, not again!'

_When afflictions of vampirism become routine, what do you do to cure that which is incurable? Why, you cheat of course: First; make a clone from earlier blood samples of the undead one. The vampire goes into a small cage with a stake to its chest. Have Raven use Puppet King magic to transfer the psychic signature (the soul, if you absolutely will) from the vampire to the clone. Upon completion of transfer, dispose off soulless vampire._

The naked, impaled body of what was once Robin fell down the garbage shaft before sailing into the cold night. There it rolled down the sloping ground formed like a half pipe by Cyborg's sonic cannon before tumbling into a small but deep hole in the ground. It landed softly on top of Raven's likewise naked body, a green arm, plus some organs that Cyborg had recently replaced with cybernetics, all of which lay upon yet more bodies and parts of bodies of superhero teenagers who had come to regard their bodies as little more than condoms.


	3. Alien

Standard disclaimers still apply.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was... uh- hrrhrmm... The title sort of says it all. Enjoy.

**Alien**

Robin had been told before that he was reckless, and that one fateful day it would come back to bite him when he least expected it.

He had no doubt this was so. He was a superhero; you'd have to be reckless – or slightly insane – to put your life on the line as frequent as he and his team did. A little insanity wasn't bad either; that way there was a lot more congruence between the things that went on at the job and in one's mind.

The Titans were currently in orbit around a desert planet very far away from home, most of them asleep in their separate cockpits. Tomorrow they were going down for a frontal assault on a heavily fortified prison manned by humongous, fiber-plated hexapods and break out a diplomat the United Nations had sent with recently implemented space-travel technologies.

It had been a rash policy to say the least, if well-intended.

Robin knew he should be asleep so as to be rested by the time the operation began, but had already slept through most of the journey, and his habitual insomnia further threw his biorhythm off. Most of the others had no such problems: Cyborg had simply shut his systems down, Beast Boy turned into a koala, and even Raven had somehow managed, despite requiring the second least amount of sleep on the team. This left Starfire and Robin awake in spite of their best efforts.

After the first two hours starring at the stars, the big heap of sand and at the stars again, it had simply become too boring. And they _were_ the T-tower's official unofficial couple, so they decided they might as well spend it together.

This entailed that Starfire exited her own cockpit and that her leader opened the hatch to his own for her – in outer space. A completely harmless maneuver for the Tamaranian, but in Robin's case it was _reckless_.

It wasn't suicidal: all you had to do was try not to hold your breath as the pressure in the cabin rapidly decreased, and not pass out as the blood boiled in your veins like a million detonating nanites and your eyes and lungs tried to eject themselves through your orifices. Robin thought he heard Bruce's stoic-smug voice somewhere in his world of pain: "I'm Batman, and I can breathe in space."

Then he could feel her lips pressing against his own as blessed air filled the re-enclosed compartment.

Hiding in the shadow of tomorrow's target, two aliens each from different solar systems bundled up around each other like plastic wrapper carelessly thrown into the interstellar roadside, free of gravity.

This intimacy was a pleasure Robin had only recently become acquainted with, enjoyed intensively, and almost desperately wanted to share with his beloved orange-skinned girl. He wanted to give himself completely to this beautiful creature that so deserved his undivided attention, but unfortunately his brain refused to give in and wouldn't stop working in its detached analyses.

That's why he noted what a physiological marvel it was that something so light and soft could be so resilient, that such delicate hands could rip steel beams apart. It deserved questioning why Starfire always unintentionally crushed anybody with her affective hugs, but could be so gentle in less platonic embraces. He guessed she was being careful.

He also noted that he was being reckless again. If something surprised his teammate and she made any sudden movements now, he might well be mutilated in the process. Right now, he was in essence a glass figurine at the mercy of a gentle giant; an emasculating thought, but nevertheless accurate in its assessment of their difference in strength.

Was this danger what aroused him so much his heart beat like it rarely did outside of live combat, what caught the breath in his throat and sent his desires spinning into dark corners – was it this hazard rather than the body of a nubile Aphrodite under his bare fingers? Had that one-eyed madman been so correct when he'd estimated the extreme lengths Robin would go to for a better adrenaline high?

And there also was the question of why Starfire's kisses always were so… chaste; shallow.

Robin tried again to lose himself in her warmth, but invariably speculated that a race that learned new languages through lip contact would have to place little romantic sentiment in such a thing, and therefore would not be the most imaginative in this area.

By unspoken agreement, the two kept to only kissing and touching. Frequent danger to their lives or not, they were both to smart to risk anything: That, their friends were sleeping only meters away, and they were possibly already disturbing Raven's sleep, receptive as she was. But for what they could do, Robin wanted to get the most out of it.

Starfire's eyes flashed wide open and she instinctively pulled away. "Robin, what are you doing?!" she whispered, alarmed.

"Just trust me," he said, pulled her back to him, and tried again. "Uhmm… open your mouth," Robin said, and immediately regretted it as he suddenly felt thoroughly disgusted with himself – old and dirty. But she did as he said and seemed to grasp the idea.

Tentatively they probed and tested each other, often splitting apart to giggle and breathe and then dive at each other more wildly than before, and soon they finally stopped worrying about the other Titans. Robin noticed that Starfire was getting warmer in his arms, which was new, but he took it as a sign that she liked this, and also took his cape and T-shirt off.

He found another thing he loved about Starfire, on top of all the many gorgeous things there was to love about Starfire; her tongue. It was the most delicate, slender tongue one could imagine; so soothing he would rather have it lick his wounds than bind them in bandages ever again, and its soft smoothness tempted him to bite it. It even tasted good – really _good_. And it was surprisingly long.

He had thought it was impossible to lick someone's oral cavity. It wasn't that he didn't like it; it was just a little surprising. She warmed up even more.

It was especially surprising when her tongue plunged all the way through his mouth and _downwards_. He didn't panic – he was too damn professional for panic. Starfire wasn't going to hurt him. It was just a little freaky; he had his mouth full of alien tongue and saliva and it was getting pretty hard to breathe.

He couldn't pull out of her embrace, tried to convey this to Starfire with a few nudges, but she didn't respond. Her eyes were glazed over and she was breathing very heavily through her nose, and was rubbing herself against him pretty hard. With _her_ strength this actually hurt, and Robin found himself having to work hard not to get injured, flowing with her forceful movements.

And still that tongue seemed to push deeper into his throat and what he could only guess was his esophagus. In the midst of several ineffective punches to Starfire's gut and a few futile attempts at the alarm button to wake the others, Robin found himself thinking that this could have been avoided with a few precautionary questions of Tamaranian mating. He estimated he could hold his breath for another ninety seconds.

Something new happened. It forced Starfire's mouth to open wider and his too. Her body temperature body rose another few degrees to the point where it almost burnt Robin, but at that moment, he froze.

Starfire's tongue was bulging. And the bulge was moving from her mouth into her lover's.

Several different mechanics of sexual nature shot through his brain in an instant and left one unforgettable image from a sci-fi horror classic burned into the retina of his inner eye.

That's when he panicked. He bit down hard on the deceptively soft but tough-as-nails tongue, kicked against the control panel in the hopes of hitting a big, red button to shake his friends out of their dreams and smashed his fists into his girlfriend's temples to no effect. The bulge forced itself into his throat, stretching it. He could only gurgle in lack of air for a real scream and slap his hands against the clear dome over him, even as he knew the sound would never carry through the empty space outside his cockpit.

He hoped his bad vibes were giving Raven nightmares: if it didn't wake her up, it'd be a fitting punishment for sleeping while he was being date-raped right next to her.


	4. The logical extreme

Standard disclaimers apply. I do now own Teen Titans.

* * *

**The logical extreme**

Training in the danger room was Robin's favourite pastime, and Raven could understand that, even if it was not exactly her cup of tea; put on some good music, get a good workout, get the endorphins rushing and even Beast Boy could have a good time pumping iron. Or jumping rope, or practising his yeti karate.

But no, Raven was the one Titan on the team who enjoyed the physical training the least. And poor, wretched he who dared look in the general direction of her cloak-less, quivering self as she strained to complete her twentieth push-up, sweating and panting in a manner way unfitting for the ice-cold Gem of Darkness. She could understand Robin's logic why she should improve her physical condition, but the temptation was still there to just use her powers: Why should she have to push herself away from the floor when she could push the floor away from _her_?

Close-combat training was a little better, because half the time she could use her powers. Not to their fullest, but she could ignore everything about footwork and just levitate, phase through and teleport out of the way of kicks and punches, or wrap herself in obsidian darkness to simulate meta-strength and resistance. Her almost inherent aversion to physical contact motivated her to improve her defence, though not her offence - as Robin would tell her again and again despite knowing that she already_ knew _- and of course did nothing to improve the whole experience.

Lately, however, power-training had fallen from her favourite form of training to the absolutely most abhorred. It was all out of necessity, and it was on her own insistence that the regimen was modified, or rather, intensified.

For Raven, power-training was usually all about finesse and concentration. Finesse was the tele- and umbra-kinetic equivalent of motor skills, something she trained with multiple objects on the same time with emphasis on precision, speed and the complexity of her manipulations. It was of course dependant on her concentration, as was the strength of her telekinesis. So basically, it was all concentration. And it followed logically that she trained to keep her it under the most distressing of combat situations, which had finally lead them _here_.

Starfire stood ready with a bucket, Cyborg with the oversized mallet they had affectively dubbed 'Cinder-Splinter'. Beast Boy had left to play video games in Ops, and Raven didn't blame him. Robin didn't look unsure, as if he was going to fool her or anyone else in the room.

"Are you sure you don't want to stick to mace?" he asked. But 'harmless' chemicals were for normal people; humans. Something police cadets had sprayed in their faces just so they understood what they were putting rioters through. Raven was on a slightly more advanced level, to put it mildly, and answered the Boy Blunder's question with dead freezing silence for three seconds.

The nail in her hand was enveloped with black as the sorceress knelt to the floor, placing the hand on the scratched and scuffed steel and the nail a few inches above it. Then she pushed it down.

The effect was of course immediate. Extensive experience helped her, and she forced her mouth shut. The silence was almost perfect save for the grinding of her teeth, almost there... but alas broken by a small, humiliating whimper. Dammit.

Pressing the hand down to keep it from curling up and opening her eyes, she forced herself to look at her mangled hand. The iron skewer had gone between the bones and lodged itself in the floor, and the broad head prevented her from simply pulling her hand up.

Cyborg hesitated. "Now," she demanded.

Like two gunmen in a Mexican standoff, the towering neotitanium behemoth of half a man and the cowering witch both went into action at the same time, he bringing the 200-kilogram hammer up and down to a place before Raven, and her... _concentrating_.

The first shield shattered in a fast dissolving spray of obsidian, but the hammer had been stopped in it's stone-crushing momentum, if only for a tenth of a second until Cyborg again pressed it down, now only centimetres above where Raven's head would have been, had she been sitting a meter closer to him.

Again the falling hammer met psychic power, but this time with less force behind it. When Cyborg brought it down again a second later with a full swing behind it, the shield held again, though Raven gasped once and almost slipped in her blood, forcing her to put weight on the impaled hand and pressing the crude metal into bone and sinew. The shield disappeared - for a moment before it reappeared. Cyborg let the blows fall again and again, and again and again the bleeding girl muttered her mantra in-between breaths. And slowly, the pain lessened, until she could feel nothing of her right hand. From here it was effectively over, and bending the nail-head into a smooth extension of the rod was a simple task while maintaining the shield, and finally she lifted her hand over the violent piercing, ending today's exercise.

Her mind was tranquil, but her body had been shaken over the edge and she waved frantically at Starfire, who caught the first stream of bile with the bucket and kindly put a hand on her back. Cyborg felt horrible. She could feel it hanging like a smelly old coat over him, a bad aura. She'd whisk it away with nothing but a thought, but he wouldn't want her to. Not yet.

The blood was seeping back into her hand as she willed it, and the wound closed itself with the healing energy she was channelling into it.

"Success. That's far enough for today," Robin said, and started to pull out the long line of bloody nails rammed into the floor around Raven.


	5. Deathwork

Yeah, I pretty much just just had fun with battle descriptions, and then the rest kind of followed.

It's supposed to be chaotic, it shifts between past and present. Basically, if Terra's there, then it's somewhere in the past. The rest is post-Season 5. Except for the verses, which are all somewhere in timeline limbo.

Oh, and IVIaedhros (thanks goes to that guy, even if he kept me up till six in the morning to discuss the nature of God) has said that the pacing is too fast, and that it felt a little cheap as a result, so if anybody has any input in that regard, do share.

**- Deathwork -**

-

_"In the name of God, impure souls of the living dead shall be banished into eternal damnation. Amen."_

- Hellsing

* * *

_Rest them in all we spilled here _

_blood and dirty rainbows _

_ignite the machine fluids _

_Inside the pyre I hear a voice call_

_so please burn them, burn it all_

* * *

We're "cleaning up" after a disaster. It's really hilarious when you look at it. The mess. Our "cleaning up". This is by far the worst spring cleaning we have ever done.

I'm point man, up front and tanking with BB, of course. I'm built like a tank and none of the hazards here can even scratch my paint job, much less the neo-titanium underneath. Tanking means me and B walk through the zombies on the ground, the girls stay safe in the sky and Robin on his rooftops. Me and the elephant are the one's who get dirty. At least I only have to be hosed and BB can clean himself up in a cup of water, but it still stinks in several way.

Between sonic weaponry, incessant explosions, elephant war cries and heavy metal rock from my baby following behind us, we should be making our presence heard across town. That's the master-plan: we paint a big, fat, red crosshair on ourselves and let the zombies come to us, if they aren't all here right now already. Which we have good reason to believe they are, but a few trips around town are still required before the infantry are ready to roll in and comb what's left for stragglers. Nobody is really put in danger that way.

Zombies aren't dangerous when you're the vanguard superheroics. Even if it's a new strain, which is the case here. Not airborne, thank whatever deities that cruise the universe, not yet, but these bodies don't walk like stick-men. Still, they're not dangerous. It's all those freaks you get when...

Well, there's the telepaths. There's one here, apparently. Or was. One in about 72.166,34 humans are some sort of psychic. There happened to be one here, and it got the whole hive mentality up pretty good.

Let me tell you, there's nothing so creepy as going into a town full of dead people that want to eat you, and knowing how ugly it's going to get... it's really, really ugly... and when you get there, there's nobody home...

* * *

Long, sloping streets in the middle of suburban nowhere, with abandoned cars all the way. One overturned. There was traces in the grass, red shoeprints along the streets. Beast Boy purposefully stepped around each crimson mark. Smashed windows, sporadic signs of gunfights. No survivors.

No walking dead.

No dead.

No nobody. Just three boys and two girls walking and floating side by side, and an empty car following them like a obedient pet. The sun hangs high above, and it's pleasantly warm on this day, despite the gentle breeze. The only sounds are those of footsteps: Hard, steel-soled steps on stone. Much heavier, metallic steps. And his own rubber soles, producing much less noise. Each of the others' footstep grated the changeling's nerves. He almost wanted to whistle, just to stand in for the birds who so conspicuously stayed silent. "What happened to the undead hordes?" he asked no one.

Even the T-car made no sound. There were only more footsteps.

In my home, I can always hear the surf of waves against the beach. I can hear the low hum of electricity run through the home I built out of an alien troopship, water through the pipes. I can even at all times detect the distinct heartbeat of everyone but myself in the tower. When I drive through Jump City, there's always a thousand sights for those who are looking. I _feel _a million electromagnetic signals passing through the air, I can link up to the net everywhere I go, I can see a hundred television ´channels, hear a hundred radio stations, cell-phone conversations, map my surroundings from satellite eyes above and see leylines of electric power and information, and I can hear the heartbeat of thousands of humans, keeping them going in their daily lives.

This place is silent. The only hearts that beat here are those inside my three friends.

* * *

_Rest in eternal nothing_

_leave life to the living_

_Leave your hunger, instinct, loathing._

_Don't worry, no trying, no curtain call._

_I'll do it, I'll end you all._

* * *

They had walked for half an hour with no zombie sightings when Robin decided the atmosphere was too oppressive even for him.

"What do you guys want to listen to?"

Normally, it was a short argument of whose turn it was to decide what music was to be put on, but nobody really felt like listening to their favorite tracks right now. Most of Raven's personal track lists fit the mood to a tee, but nobody wanted to feel worse than absolutely necessary. They agreed on something none of them really listened to much in their spare time, a mix of semi-noise, semi-metal instrumental rock. The kind that could even put out the super-villains that weren't used to such psychological warfare, and really sounded right with explosions and things being smashed, and screams.

According to theory and our own experience, this would draw zombies like flies to zombies. But we ended up walking around for another half hour with noise rock screaming into the back of our heads without seeing even one cadaver. I turned it off again when Raven's headache leveled an apartment building. She was naturally less concerned with public damages than normally, but still...

There was supposed to have been a zombie apocalypse here. It should be swarming with brain-eaters all over the place. But there wasn't even still corpses, even though there should have been plenty of headshots with the federal weapons legislation. The legislation that was supposed to put the normal Joe on eye-level with zombies, and all those other freaks.

Like us. As if.

* * *

"If you can't do it, don't try to force yourself, okay?"

"I can do it." It was an automatic response. He didn't doubt that the newest Titan could do what was necessary, but this was not just friendly concern for her feelings.

Keep the voice neutral and the face friendly. "That was an order." She looks surprised. "If you get scared, float to somewhere safe."

"I can control my powers now, you know." Which means a lot to her, understandably.

"I do know, but you can't afford to loose your edge on the job, ever. We trust you as much as any of the rest of us, and anyone who gets scared are supposed to get themselves to safety. Otherwise you're a liability. It goes for all of us. Safety is the highest priority in purge-missions, and, no offence, but we have more experience and can take better care of ourselves than you can. So..."

Cyborg ends his aborted sentence: "Concentrate on watching your own butt."

"Guy's, I'm a superhero too. I've seen dead people before. I'm not going to break down or anything, okay? I _know_ they're already dead." Her hair fell over her eyes like it tended to did. Could be a problem in a tight place.

Robin wouldn't ever forget the first time he broke down. Or rather, he panicked, and the training had taken over from there. He'd blacked out, and he hadn't dared to find out if any of the bodies were virus-negative afterwards. "Okay. But stay out of range. You don't have our defensive capability. And Starfire, braid her hair."'

"What?"

"Wonderful idea! Please, sit down Terra and we shall commence the braiding maneuvers."

* * *

_We have to purge this city._

_Stain your hands, blades and souls,_

_slay the sinless without pity,_

_forgive them, sisters, brothers, and purge them _

_rest them, purge them and save them_

* * *

In her first fight against zombies, Terra tipped a bunch of buildings over the largest masses. Pretty much leveled what little skyline _that _place had. Awe inspiring power, absolutely, yet Robin was more concerned with the way she had crushed whole families right in front of her without a single moment of hesitance. He could tell she wasn't entirely untouched, or had rationalized their death perfectly already the first time she did it.

The first times were _always_ the hardest, Robin knew that. But this didn't look hard to Terra, only unpleasant.

He didn't like to think about what it meant, and he wasn't Batman, so he had let it stay at concern. She had a right for privacy, to keep her history her own, like they all had. Especially himself.

* * *

"Guys, let's get something to eat. If the zombies aren't coming around anyway, there's no reason to starve, right?" The changeling was looking towards a mart. There was the smashed remains of an interim barricade behind the smashed glass doorway. Stacks of shopping carts.

Robin shrugged. "Okay, no point in fighting starved."

The inside of the place was pools of soda, beer and oil on the floor. Rotting tomatoes, apples, and assorted groceries. It could only stink worse if the meat wasn't cealed in plastic. Bagged and canned foodstuff. Lots of empty shotgun shells. A single smear of somebody's cranial fluids over the dairy-section. Fifty different flavors of potato chips.

Like the rest of them, Starfire hadn't made outward signs of discomfort, but still quickly found the mustard and started binging one bottle after another in a steady tempo. Beast Boy put crackers, juice and chocolate in a plastic bag, Robin downed some of his pills with lukewarm ice-tea, and Cyborg gorged himself on tortilla chips, which was a pretty ugly affair when his fingers couldn't handle the thin, crispy treats. Raven just floated there.

"Yes, we've still made no contact... none at all?... They don't usually hide... We'll keep going." Robin flipped his communicator shut. "Patton out there says that the barricade hasn't seen any zombies either. Not a single one while we've been down here, and none for the last twenty four hours."

"This is the behavior of a sentient enemy, not mindless cadavers." Starfire.

"Someone is controlling them." Cyborg.

"Yes." Raven. "I've felt something off about this place since we got here."

"Broadcasted mind control?" Robin.

She nodded. "Spread out, unfocused and not powerful enough to affect us, but zombies only need a little push."

* * *

They may share a thousand brains through the psychic, but it's still just a bunch of rotten brains. The best strategy they came up with was massing in one place and hit us with everything they had at once. Essentially a small upgrade from what the same thing they always do. I remember that's what I thought. Now I think someone would really liked to have a look at the brain in that telepath, but that's not really an option.

They still didn't have a chance, of course. We've gone through the end of the world. Zombies are so infinitely weaker than firedemons that we almost considered telling the bigwigs to have somebody else do this.

The reason we didn't is that there's always that element of _chance_. The chance you might get hurt or worse is always there on missions, and it is a particularly influential factor when you deal with the sort of quantities that zombies represent. And when you go into this dark, underground parking lot because something definitely is down there, judging from the smell... and when you find this stinking, disgusting mountain of bodies, literally a rotting meat-wall across the place – and when they suddenly come flooding through your only exit, you can't help wishing you had stayed home.

Well, you found them now, so you turn your back to the wall and your power-weaponry to the undead, hold 'em at gun-range, let loose -

* * *

... like a disco mortuary, with throngs of people jumping and screaming and colorful lights dancing over them. The defensive fire and Cyborg's ghostly flashlight illuminated glimpses of torn clothes, empty eyed stares and open ribcages.

They were running, by god! Running and gunned down one after another, groups at a time, more and more, soon getting close enough that Beast Boy and Robin had to cover for the girls firing over they shoulders, but rapidly forced to back up to the meat-wall. Cyborg was left at the fore, arms blazing and face concealed in a plasma-proof mask, like a lone rock jutting up from the human waves crashing against him. He only shrugged them off, changed his sonic cannons for chainsaws and, stomping zombies with each step, plowed and hacked his way through the rain...

* * *

- until the damn mountain starts moving behind your back! And I trip and fall and crawl my way back, but it's like I'm just pushing dead zombies back with my feet instead of getting anywhere before I can warn them.

* * *

_I've killed people before. The Titans don't know, and I don't think anyone of them have killed. They've never had the same problems like me with their powers. Raven had those priests who helped her... or maybe not so much helped her, if I have to judge from what I know about her, but at least she never killed anybody because she couldn't control her powers._

_Okay, I'm not sure at all. If anyone of them is ever going to commit murder, I see Raven doing it._

Terra looks back at those thoughts now while she looks at Starfire point a flat hand at the officer's face and shoot a starbolt through it. The chewed-at face implodes into itself and out through the crater at the back of his skull.

When Terra had opened the earth and let the undead fall down to crush them when she closed to ravine again, the geokinetic saw those she had killed before: The zombies were already dead, and so were those she had killed before, and _he_ had helped her to accept that guilt. Accept it and get over it, and that was something she didn't think she could ever thank him enough for. It didn't kill her inside to do this, not the way she could see Robin struggle to finish them off. Not like Cyborg retreated into his cyberbrain and macho facade, or the way it visibly sickened Beast Boy. She was sure even stoic, emotionless Raven had a problem with what they had been ordered to do.

The mass grave the city has become, the extreme lethality of the bio-weapon that has been proclaimed the most potent WMD in history, the scores of superhumans that travel through the metropolis on a cleansing genocide like a vision of the end of days... none of that unnerves Terra as much as the genuine, cheery beam of a smile on her friend's beautiful lips. Beautiful like everything else about her, graceful in her freedom of gravity and monstrous power. Even the way she gives death to the undead is beautiful: the gleam of scorching fire in the alien alloys on her arms and neck, the ease and confidence exuding from her body, even the single trail of someone's blood across her nose and around her smiling lips is beautiful.

After a day of feeling protected by her precious friends she's decieving, of almost pitying the unthinking zombies' inability to properly defend themselves from the metahuman march, suddenly Terra's breast constricts and her blood runs cold.

* * *

"They're in the pile! It's only fatal damages on top! They're insi-!"

Bright and dark blasts went off into the clawing and squirming wall behind their defensive ring, setting meat aflame and throwing body parts over the boy's head.

"Give us an exit, now!"

Blue twin beams lit up the underground death-trap and blasted through the ceiling into the street above, which only came crashing down with rot from the horde that had gathered over them. Cyborg was buried in seconds, but Robin flipped between the undead with inhuman agility, dodging falling bodies and pressing his legs to send him rocketing through the hole, hauled himself through the waterfall of undeath raining down.

Starfire had lit the place up like a firestorm before he was halfway out. The heat scorched him, hands clawed for him and gravity pulled him towards death... Robin tore through melting flesh like a spear, and then he was up and flying alongside the half-demon. Beneath them, a sea of gaping, moaning mouths and a hole in the ground: a melting pot of flesh and green fire, growing exponentially hotter and more intense

* * *

and it'll take me a week to get the zombie-crusts out of my-

* * *

obsidian flashes through the mob, and the things start falling into pieces. Arms and torsos and legs and heads. And the whole thing still moves. "Leave it to the fire-squads" And then green lances streaks across and along the streets, in level with the targets, cutting and burning and making a smell that she _really shouldn't_ enjoy.

Cyborg's two cannons are, if anything, even messier. Sonic vibrations essentially disintegrates the target, and as he plows through the masses, a fine, crimson mist is left in the wake, like a burial shroud. He is dripping, and Beast Boy has become an unclean brown monster from eras past.

"Cooool."

I rarely use that word, but now I hear myself drone it in appreciation of the spectacle, like it was all just a big show. Part of me would feel guilty about that, but then, I don't do feelings. What feelings there are, I've sorted out already. For the moment, I rest suspended several meters over the churning slaughter-field and allow myself a little macabre fascination.

The only thing abnormal about me is that I'm used to seeing a splatter film this close. Fascination with death is hardly exclusive to the infernal, whatever else the priests were trying to make me believe. I could videotape those two monsters down there - that's what they look like, as they wade through the animated remains of humans - and sell them in another dimension, tell the locals it's a mockumentary splatter film, rate it M for blood and gore. It could conceivably become a blockbuster simply from the 'advanced special effects'. Put the same thing I see behind a screen, and suddenly it's okay to drink in all the details, to even laugh at the mindless violence.

So a whisper of fascination is allowed past my mental roadblocks while I admire the two down there: Animal and machine, with bits of their 'enemies' decorating their frames, walking and crushing forward, unstoppable.

They look cool.

I'm just watching. As long as no one is hurt, there's essentially no difference between splatter and snuff. There's no such thing as thought crimes. I'm just doing my job, and I'm doing it well. I'm not even _feeling_ anything any more. Nothing that's going to impair my focus, anyway.

Something whispers behind my eyes that I should be meditating more...

* * *

_seven little zombies._

_Six little zombies_

_births eight little zombies kills _

_ten zombies tasting biting eating_

_seven little zombies._

* * *

One-two-three-four-five. One-two-three-four. Robin strikes one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight zombies down at a time, rapid pin-point jabs through eyes with. He's through the next one before the five last one's have even hit the ground. The end of his weapons enters the skull of the woman, the lid bursting with milky fluid and pulpy matter. -Swish-smash-skid.

The last natural tooth in Robin jaw splits as Robin's cheek grinds over the asphalt, launched like an arrow by his own death-grip on his weapon when the woman jerked her head around. He twists in his awkward fall, lifts himself and with the tips of his fingers and rights himself to his feet in a half-second. Chews the chards in his mouth, spit them out.

Uh... yeah, it hurts. Like someone stabbed you. In the mouth.

* * *

It's high time to take a break from the combat, because if I have to wear this uniform for another minute I'm going to be sick. Acceptance and whatnot, brain matter is still the grossest thing I have ever...

Y'know what: Screw it. I take the small knife in my sleeve that Robin suggested I start carry ("you never know when...") and cut my shirt open in the front so I wont have to pull it over my head. No way am I putting that stuff closer to my head and my hear. It's already icking me out so much that I can feel my stomach roll – don't do this to me now, stomach, please don't- please-

The long sleeves have to be cut too, and I cross my arms over my bra while I float my platform-rock to a district I know have already been cleaned out, as much for warmth as for modesty. Now if only I had something to be modest about...

While I look around, another explosion behind me goes off. It's a constant thunder, like an artillery bombardment. With this many teams going around, you have to make sure that you don't blow each other up, so I have to stay inside the zone assigned to the Titans. All of the other superpowered freaks out here doesn't need to know where I'm going to take a bath.

Finding the biggest, most expensive looking house I can before my teeth start to chatter, I land my rock through the roof and into the middle of the living room.

Nice place. Big paintings on the walls and fine china. The furniture that looks like it's made of expensive tree, there's a rug that I feel guilty of stepping on in my shoes, and even a fireplace. Doesn't seem to be anybody home. Thank god.

Power has been down in this city for days and the shower is icy. I plan to make it short, and then I'm going to see if there isn't something in here that I can fit. If I'm lucky, maybe a girl my age used to live here. Maybe she liked the same clothes as me. Maybe it was her shampoo I'm washing my hair with.

Bump! I scream. I jump and slip on the slick floor, before I tear the wall out and into the room beside the bath. There's moans coming from somewhere. The water is still cascading down, obscuring my vision along with my unmade hair. Debris float in the air, ready to smash. But the other room I just made a sizeable hole into is empty, and so is the bathroom.

It hammers on the bathroom door from the other side. The door shakes but holds. There is no way to describe how glad I am to have locked the door. The thing doesn't even try to turn the doorknob.

With the sounds of someone knocking their head uncontrollably at the wooden frame that separates us and moaning for my brain, I hastily dry myself and levitate five tiles from the floor. I position myself at the far end of the bathroom and unlock the door with the ends of two of the tiles. For the first time today, I look away from I crush the woman's face and break her neck.

* * *

It's not the army of zombies that's dangerous. Not to me, anyway. But take it from a veteran: Zombies are like a box of chocolates: You never know when one of them jumps up and transforms into flesh-eating mist or some other stupid. The zombie _metahumans_ are dangerous. And god forbid the virus mutates the superpowers too.

I don't know if the latter's the case here, but the brunette in her forties have just thrown me fifty meters into the air and through a roof. Through the windows in a dead stranger's kitchen I can see her grow some tentacles and start spewing something that looks vile. Robin blows her up with a couple of bird-discs. Now if she could please just not regenerate...

Of course she's still moving because Robin didn't blow her in enough pieces.

'Tell you what: the day we see a zombie reality-mancer, I'm just going to hijack some cluster bombs and napalm and make it all burn. There's _never_ any survivors anyway.

* * *

The princess' burgundy tresses wave in the shimmering air. There is pulse in her arms that almost feels like a cramp, her hearts beats out of sync and her skin has become brilliant emerald. The others can feel her body heat from the radiation, and her body paints hues of emerald over everything. Steam rises from the bodies that approach her, skin withers and blackens and curls into itself, but still they crawl while their brittle limbs crumbles under their weight.

For a moment, Starfire sees herself in another place, in another time. Somewhere her parents hadn't had to sell her like a commodity, and their race had done as a warrior-race was supposed to do.

The sky was the same color as that of Raven's eyes, and the ground a softer material than stone. She rejoiced in the sound of her family and a million of their subjects ravaging this last fortress of on the continent. The moment of victory was again in the fist of the royal Fire.

To her left, standing a little ahead of her: her sister in blood and war, Blackfire. Empress, loved, strong and revered by all of Tamaran.

To her right, standing abreast with her as an equal, the beautiful fiancée that made her heart soar with his unparalleled skill and unfaltering loyalty, and made her tremble with his kisses.

Behind her, like the protector he had always been and always would be: Galfore. Massive and great and wise, and unstoppable in his ground shaking rage against those that would oppose the royal house.

And under her heavy, thunder-steel boots: the kneeling defeated and splayed bodies of the enemy. She picked one up and held it in front of her so she could see it and it could see her and understand who was superior. She incinerated the head, and then she saw again the rotting meat burn away and leave the grinning skull of a human wreathed in green flames, held in front of her like she vaguely remembered a man hold another skull and say something that sounded profound, but that she hadn't understood. She threw it away and went on to combat these hungry dead at Robin's side. Could anything be more glorious than that?

Robin... said he was one of these humans, even if it stood clear to her and should be obvious to all others that he was far from these peons. Like the best of this race, he was ingenious, but he was also so much _stronger_ than any of them. Which other human could stand up to one of the Royal house of Tamaran in battle? Which other human could weave so easily through the tight-packed ranks of the enemy like fish swam through water, and what human could dart from the ground to the highest reaches of city-spires?

Strength and Honor were the two greatest virtues Starfire had grown up to be molded in, and none would have found a place in her heart without them.

* * *

"Bomber!" cries Beast Boy in warning, twenty meters above. He falls, and the earth trembles when he hits the pavement, crushing human bodies between it and his humongous, maritime corpus. The great, green mammal disappears, and moments later the boy again appears over another group of flesh-eater.

"Bomber!"

The impact thunders, and everything shakes. Crumbled and mangled remains are all that remains. Transform, fly, transform, fall, repeat.

* * *

Robin breathes, sighs exasperatedly, scowls, and says: "Me too." Then, with a twirl of his bo-staff, takes of the head of the teenager that has shambled to him. The body stands for another five seconds, displaying the plain T-shirt the girl was wearing in her last moments, emblazoned with letters on the front spelling "I 3 SF" over a stylized drawing of his girlfriend.

* * *

The boy's aren't that afraid. They might not even realize it. I probably should at least feel some revulsion with this nightmarish scene. Starfire has an excuse in not even being part human. Terra...

Sometimes I wonder if there's a reason the core-titan girls seem to be the worst ones. But that's now fair to Starfire, because to us she is still the most gentle and affectionate being you can imagine, and like so much else, I envy the perfection with which evolution has adapted her race's psyche to carnage. Look at her. She can prod her bare fingers through skulls and still retain her innocence. If there exists anything more paradoxical than an innocent princess of a warrior-race, I would like it to be an innocent demon.

But as with the time all of Jump City had been reduced to slags and unreal grotesques by one disgruntled, criminal youth who jumped into the vortex of power and risked death and existence, again the only word I can seem to think of is 'cool'. It hadn't been so different from my father's apocalypse, and if the End hadn't turned for the best, I wonder if I wouldn't again have found the same fascination for that world and all that Trigon was.

I'm used to nightmares. What the others dream when they sweat and roll in their beds at night, that's my dreams. My _nightmares_ would drive a mortal insane. And I'm half-mortal. That's why I let myself _indulge _in them just enough, seek refuge in the part of me that isn't human when I think I'll scream if I wake up now.

AAAIIIRRRGHGHG! (cutting into the stomach, voice breaks)

And I try so hard to be human. Who is a little inhumanity once in a while going to hurt? Not this one, because he feels nothing anymore, so it's okay to be a little creative. His spine feels slippery to my darkness, and the spray of stale and coagulated blood is... disappointing, somehow.

Something inside me feels like I did it right, but the result is not the way it should be. Too silent and too dead. I feel unfulfilled. And I should feel at all.

I should stop now. Feeling. I should really, really stop... Now.

* * *

His hands shake when the boy looks at them. Looks down at the Doom Patrol uniform, so much pride invested in. So many people on it.

The gloves are wrenched off, and Beast Boy is happy that he bound them extra tight around his wrists when the first running footsteps sounded in the dark of the parking lot: the hands are green, scarred, and altogether ugly, but they are clean.

The gloves are thrown away without a second thought, and he digs into the flesh with one hand as he walks to a soda vending machine, the clean finger swallowed by the skin like it was slime. In the same place his uniform and communicator go when he morphs, he feels the metallic surface and extracts the necessary coin to get a sticky, warm substance in a bottle.

It's silly, he knows, but nonetheless pours it over the black and purple fabric. It's waterproof, and it get a little cleaner. But there's not enough soda in that bottle, and he can't use the water until Cyborg can tell if that where the virus is or not.

* * *

_Father, is the the real End?_

_Is _this_ truly my life?_

"_Give your fire to deathwork, friend."_

"_Sorry, but I have to splatter you, miss."_

_Fuck it, I hate to love this_

* * *

He punches through the machine like no normal gorilla could do, morphs back as fast he can and pours one bottle over himself, another, two at a time and is through the stack in minutes. If he can avoid it, he doesn't want to morph his uniform into himself. There's still too much _filth _on it.

Invisible tendrils reach out and touch the boy's psyche, spreads through his nerves and stops the shaking, replacing it with a duller, healthier weariness. Uncertainties and disgust begins to lift from his spirit like noxious fumes in the wind. Beast Boy suddenly notices that he is famished. He sends a grateful smile to the dark shadow floating over the dead chaos. Hides it before anyone else sees.

Just their little secret. And Beast Boy leans against the wall, close his eyes and floats away in the small, empathic high. She even takes away the guilt.

* * *

The street rolls like an giant beast before me, a landslide that doesn't care about which way is up and which is down. I slap my hand into the ground, and the ground slaps right back into a group of five. The earth rises around me in massive slabs of rock that eclipses my thin, bony frame, like I was the sun to their planets. And I crush them!

I knew already that I could kill, even if I didn't try. But this is so much different. I have orders to do this, and I can finally let loose! Really let loose.

I can collapse all but the steel-and-glass sky-scrapers, knock the little critters off their feet with a tug in the earth like it was carpet to be pulled away from under their feet. Wrecking balls of gravel and dirt streak over the people, crushing and absorbing them into a dripping, macabre mass of earth and death.

(_Terra Mortis_)

It is exhilarating to feel so powerful. If power corrupts, then I can now understand why _he_ chose to be a villain, because playing a vengeful God of Earth like this, untouchable and above right and wrong makes me feel more alive than I ever have before: Every mangled body that I know I don't have to take responsibility for makes a heartbeat inside me all the more precious, every destroyed home makes me feel so much more valuable and worthy, and I feel like more than a human.

I have transcended humanity. I'm too powerful for them to hunt anymore, too powerful to be prosecuted or persecuted. Now all they can do is fear me. That fear gives _him _power, and I wonder if he feels the same way with that. Do I make him feel powerful when I kill and shake the earth at his command, when I expose myself and lie in his arms that could so easily crack this little goddess like a twig?

I guess it's too late to start worrying about falling into the 'dark side'.

Right now, it feels like it's enough. It was worth all that I sacrificed and betrayed.


	6. Grey Skin

It just fell into my head one day I had gotten careless and started thinking about everything and nothing. Thanks for betareading again goes to Iviaedhros, and now I really should get back to betaing his work, before I forget again.

Also, ironically because life happened, I have now gotten a lot more time on my hands, and I intend to end my two other stories and get serious with my writing here in general. Well, as serious as a hobby should ever become, anyway.

**- Grey Skin -**

Time had run out for the great city-state of Azarath. Now it floated majestically in all it's shinning splendor and dignity. In a matter of minutes it would burn and crash spectacularly, just as soon as Trigon (First of Demonkind, Destroyer of Worlds, Incarnation of All Evil, Source of All Darkness, ad infinitum...) figured out what to do with this latest of unforeseen obstacles.

He had seen her as soon as he breached the dimensional wall, his four unfocused, all-seeing eyes instantly taking in the entirety of the planet. Where he entered was not important. He could have materialized somewhere inside the planet, he didn't really check, but in the space of another moment he was before her, sensing her soul and mind and confirming his suspicions.

"Unbelievable..." The word left him like a disbelieving curse. His terror-inspiring visage screwed up in disgust.

Raven, interrupted in her meditation, calmly opened her eyes to meet his gaze, unflinching. It was a condescending look that said 'believe it' and flipped him off simultaneously, much like her appearance right now.

Her robes were so lily-white that dust seemed to flee from the fabric, the beast-like power he had bestowed upon her at her conception was chained and tamed, and he sensed the heart-deep benevolence within her, rooted in wisdom more than innocence. It was all palpable to him like a stiff breeze and would have made a lesser monster disintegrate spontaneously from the proximity.

The Seed of Evil, his one-way ticket to the prime plane, was, in a word, pure. Balanced and at rest within herself, untainted despite of her heritage. No, it would be more accurate to say that she was this pure *because* of all he had given her with his essence.

That his own flesh and blood could be twisted into *this* was not only unbelievable, it was shaming.  
They were in the innermost sanctum of the central temple complex of Azarath. To these halls, only the most trusted of the High Priestess Azar held admittance. Marble and sky-scraping ceilings abounded, with pale light-rays entering through high windows at appropriate intervals, but it was still more than well-lit. 'At least it's spacious,' Trigon thought to himself. He could comfortably stand 30 feet tall in here without scraping against the columns.

She spoke, and her words were predictable: "I knew you would be here today. You have come to destroy Azarath and to take me for whatever purpose you sired me for." The girl stood down from her floating lotus position and set her feet on the ground. "You will not succeed in either. Azarath will not die easily, demon. She will fight you to the last breath, and so will I." White tendrils emerged from her fingers and eyes as she spoke.

Trigon scoffed. "There will be no fight, daughter."

Raven nodded insistently. "Yes, there will. You may have sired me, but I am not your daughter, and you are not my father. You can't control me. I would kill myself before I become a tool for you, even if it means breaking the precepts. There is nothing that you can do that will make me bend to your will," the young girl said, and the demon-lord knew it to be true. Her voice was even and controlled as she spoke. No fear or loathing. Nothing to work with. The monks had done a thorough job on his child, that much was for certain. No matter. He was Trigon, he was going to break a thousand-year city state in fifteen minutes, and then he'd further his plans for a world's destruction, with time to spare before he would have to return to the prison plane. He had ways to deal with things like these.

The demon-giant crouched in front of his gem. The movement was like a crimson landslide before the slight frame of the fourteen-year-old, and Raven was a small girl even for her tender age. "Your heart is very pure. It is purer than any human heart I have ever seen," he started soliloquizing rhetorically.  
Seeing that there would be no altercation for the moment, Raven stopped glowing in preparation for battle, but silently kept a wary eye on the towering figure before her.

"Yes it is. You are so pure I wonder if there is anything at _all_ inside you," Trigon continued. "Azar has raised you to deny me, even the part of me that is inside you. And in doing so, you have denied and unmade yourself."

"I have seen you inside me, and I have conquered the darkness. I have destroyed and remade it, and if I've been remade in the process, then I have no regrets."

"You have shaped yourself, and shaped the essence that is the power I gave you. You are well prepared, pure and powerful enough to defy even me." At least enough to kill herself if he tried to dominate her brain by force... If the little waif hadn't locked away and sterilized her own emotions, she might have smiled at this admission.

... He would have to be more subtle.

"But have you ever wondered, daughter? For all those years you have meditated, the spilled opportunity to enjoy the time I have given you, and for all this purity you have gained... Have you ever wondered how dark the light is?"

She blinked, not understanding in the short time before the demon's eyes flashed with a deeper burning and she was seized by agony. Her chest convulsed violently, as if a parasite that had festered behind her ribcage for years suddenly grew and decided to end its tenure in this host. The psychic energies that ever danced within Raven like a otherworldly thunderstorm split in two, and one half burst through the crimson glow over the screaming girl's heart.

Two cold hands grasped Raven's head, and her cry grew quiet, perhaps in the dread of understanding what was happening.

It was not hands placed there to soothe, merely to find leverage. The colorless mirror-image of Raven pulled herself in front of her, the apparition's lower body still trapped within the white-robed body crumbled on the polished marble floor. Indigo eyes met baleful red.

"No..." Raven managed to choke regretfully with lungs that were warped by the conjuration.

"I was within you," the manifestation said, surprise widening its own eyes at this discovery.

And then, with a mutual, telekinetic effort, they wrenched themselves from each other. The apparition arched through the air before catching herself in the air where Raven could get a good look at her.

It had her face, her body and her powers, but no color painted it except for the red of the eyes. Raven's own skin was pale, but it still was human, still alive. This thing, on the other hand, was dead gray. The cloak was a deeper shade and the leotard black underneath. Even her black hair seemed darker on this copy.

It was her, but only a part of her that she had sought to erase from her soul for years now. And it too knew this. It was after all, a part of herself.

* * *

"Your silly teenage rebellion ends here, daughter. Your small life will end." Trigon had shrunk to a more human if still hulking proportions and put a hand on Darker Raven's shoulder. "And with your death, maybe your life can begin," he added to his new daughter.

The Darker Raven didn't squirm at his touch, but he sensed her discomfort. Purer Raven stood up and glowed with power at her Shadow. "I told you, devil: I would never kill anyone but myself," she reminded him with a hint of misplaced victory in her voice.

He smirked a bit. "And you will."

"And I told you that there would be a fight."

He smirked a little more, baring murderous fangs. "And you were right."

The Darker Raven turned her head to address the demon. "Father, it's unnecessary. I won't defy you, so there's no need to do this." Her voice was a toneless drone that further reminded Purer of a corpse. Already the smallest buds of bitter antipathy broke the tranquil surface of her mindscape's crystal lake. 'And just when she is no longer necessary...' Trigon thought to himself.

"Don't fool yourself, shadow." Purer Raven taunted. "It is the only joy he will ever understand, and besides, you are my enemy as much as he is. You _are_ Him."

Darker Raven faced her parent incarnation. "All that light and all those teachings are blinding you. You see his power, how it dwarfs our own and all of Azarath, and yet you insist on resisting. It is hopeless to fight. At least this way, you will be spared."

"It makes no difference if I die, or if all of existence dies. So long as you never submit, evil will never win!" And with that, the beacon of light that was Raven poured all of her purity and all of her magic, her psychic powers and her skill into undoing her own Shadow. The colorless girl who spoke only in a monotone only watched her doom fly at her in a thousand tendrils of brilliant white, hesitating for a moment that stretched into seconds.

Three seconds had passed without her death. The crimson giant walked around Darker Raven to look her in the face. "And you say you understand the futility of trying to fight my will. But still you hope that she would destroy you and leave me childless." He brushed her with a claw, and shining runes burned into her skin like a disciplinary caress, but faded quickly. "I can't control you either." It was starting to become humiliating. "But I don't need to. Because if you won't dispose of this failed gem, then I'll do it myself."

"No!" Darker Raven exclaimed panicked, understanding the implications of that statement. He sensed his dark daughter's sympathy for her 'sister'. "She deserves mercy. I'll kill her."

* * *

Trigon left the fight between his two daughters to amble towards those who had discovered his entrance into this world. They had hurried so and were close by now.

That old woman, Azar, was flying herself and the elder monks in a rare display of 'arrogant power' to the sanctum that was now shaking with the forces unleashed there. Raven's teacher had lived long enough, he decided. She and her entourage promptly burst into flames in the courtyard outside the entrance to the Fifth Chapel, only two hundred meters to the east of their goal.

There was another that he would let come close enough to see his face again. She was a woman now, wiser and colder. But all that she had learned in this sanctuary evaporated when she materialized before him, all her hard-earned composure coming to nothing before him. Animated fire followed in his footsteps, devouring the stone-building and whispering and piercing her with four thousand eyes. She sank to her knees. Appropriate.

He picked her up so she could see him. "It is so good to see you again, lovely Arella. Almost makes me nostalgic. You won't get to speak to or touch her this time either. You are far too late to love our daughter. Of course, not that you ever really did in the first place." She buried her face in her hands, silent tears starting to drip through her fingers. She didn't have to speak, and she knew it.

He took her by her midriff, easily closing his hand around her and waking an old terror in the woman's memory. "But believe it or not: I'll let you leave a message for her." He took her hands away and made her look him in the eyes. "I'll leave it here for her to find if she should ever return. Perhaps looking for guidance, perhaps for shelter like you did. She will only find your echo."

His dark daughter would find only an echo left for another one to hear. Useless words suffused with all the hopelessness that Trigon could stuff into Arella as she drew her last breaths.

* * *

In the innermost, light and darkness clashed and cut through the tall pillars, rapidly bringing down the great structure that had taken most of a century to raise. Space and environment meant nothing in this battle. The Ravens bent the dimensions around them and tore gouges in the dimensional walls, matched their raw power in massive discharges of lumen and umbra and slipped through each others telekinetic nets, preventing each other from simply rotating their brains around inside their skulls. Emotions that they hadn't experienced for years threatened to burst their hearts with each empathic offensive, painting each other as beloved and despicable at the same time. All emotions were quelled as fast as they arose, but already they were resorting to feelings that no human had or demon had ever felt before, waking bizarre ecstasies, pains and desires to the both of them. The battle of minds that was fought at the same time as the physical and super-physical battles blurred the lines of individuality more than they already were, and often Raven found herself moving in perfect symmetry.

At least there were no battle of words, for they understood each other with an intimacy that no two true individuals could ever attain.

But true mirrors of each other they were not. One fought to end the battle she had fought her whole life against the inherent wrongness in herself, while the other fought for the sake of the other, that she might die a quick death. And that was why Purer was winning the battle, slowly wearing Darker's mind out.

So, still siphoning the last of Arella's soul through her mouth, Trigon extended a thought and tripped Purer Raven's concentration. Before the moment of Purer's slip of mind was over, her frail body was slung by a fraction of the monstrous forces clashing, and scattered across the ruins of Azarath.

* * *

"Happy Birthday, Raven."

Psychic body language told him that she didn't understand. He was the only one that was happy.

"On Earth, it is customary to congratulate each other on the date of one's birth. You should learn these things, because you are going to earth."

She understood. The colorless Raven floated, huddled in her cloak without looking at the mass of Azarath sinking towards the silver ocean far below.

"It's also customary to give presents to the birthday child."

She tensed, apprehensive.

"I don't have any for you, though. I don't make a very good dad." He laughed somewhere he found the primitive joke funny. "But, you're also supposed to wish for something in advance. How about you wish for something now?"

Raven hesitated. Then: "I want to have colors. Not these eyes. I want hers."

Thus, Trigon colored Raven with purple eyes and what other colors pleased him, but left her skin untouched. It made her look dead, which was appropriate for one who had committed suicide.


End file.
